Silver metal is widely used as a recording material and printing plate material, and it also is used as a high conductivity material due to its excellent conductivity. A general method for producing silver metal is to heat silver oxide, which is an inorganic substance, in the presence of a reducing agent. Specifically, silver oxide powder is dispersed in a binder and a reducing agent is added thereto to prepare a paste, and the paste is then applied to a base material or the like and heated. In this way, the silver oxide is reduced by heating in the presence of a reducing agent, and the silver metal that is produced by this reduction fuses to form a film that includes silver metal.
However, the problem with the use of silver oxide as a material for forming silver metal is that it requires a reducing agent as well as a very high processing temperature of approximately 300° C. Moreover, if the silver metal is to be used as conducting material, then it is necessary to use finer silver oxide particles in order to lower the resistance of the film that is formed.
On the other hand, recently there have been reported methods of forming silver metal using organic acid silver instead of inorganic compounds as mentioned above. An example of an organic acid silver that has been reported is silver behenate (Patent Document 1), and silver stearate and silver α-ketocarboxylate also have been reported as new materials for forming silver metals (Patent Documents 2 and 3).    Patent Document 1: JP 2003-191646 A    Patent Document 2: JP H10-183207 A    Patent Document 3: JP 2004-315374 A